Louis Mountbatten was not only Prince Phillip’s unclehe was an Admiral of the Fleet, a statesman, Viceroy of the British Indian Empire, Governor-General of the Independent India and a First Sea Lord. But in the summer of 1979, on a sailing holiday in the Republic of Ireland, he became the victim of an IRA assassination. This documentary explores the events surrounding the bomb explosion, which took the life of not just Mountbatten, but his 14 year old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull, a 15 year old cabin boy and 83 year old Baroness Brabourne. Sinn Fein vice-president Gerry Adams said of the murders “What the IRA did to him is what Mountbatten had been doing all his life to other people and with his war record I don’t think he could have objected to dying in what was clearly a war situation. While the IRA saw Mountbatten’s death as a necessary action to bring the Irish conflict to the forefront of English politics the human loss devastated the Royal Family with Prince Charles losing his great uncle and mentor. This documentary explores how a wealthy Irish seaside resort became the site of such callous murders and how the events of that day still resonate through the town and the Royal Family three decades on.
